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Sean Dorsey to speak on Dance/USA Webinar

TAKING ACTION to Support Non-Conforming / Trans / Transitioning Students

April 21, 2020

3:00 – 5:00 PM ET
2:00 – 4:00 PM CT
12:00 NOON – 2:00 PM PT with a 10 min bio + stretch break

This conversation is for members of Dance/USA’s School Directors and Staff Affinity Group only. ZOOM details will be sent directly to registered School Directors and Staff Affinity Group members.

The focus of the conversation will center on more active practices and environments for transgender and gender non-conforming students / youth. Attendees will be joined by guest speakers with significant time for Questions and Comments.

Following the Attendee List, please see two additional resources:

 

Guest Speakers

Sean Dorsey is an award-winning San Francisco-based choreographer, dancer and writer. Recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has toured his work to 30 US cities. Dorsey has been awarded five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance. He has been named in Dance Magazine’s 25 To Watch and named “San Francisco’s Best Dance Company” (SF Weekly). Most recently, Dorsey was awarded a Dance/USA Artist Fellowship. Dorsey’s dances are powerful explorations of human experience. His works are a fusion of fullthrottle dance, luscious partnering, intimate storytelling and theater. Highly physical, accessible, rooted in story, and danced with precision and guts and deep humanity, Dorsey’s works have been praised as “exquisite…poignant and important” (BalletTanz), “trailblazing” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly). A School Directors and Staff Affinity Group Focused Conversation 1 Dorsey is the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first organization to create, present and tour year-round multidisciplinary transgender arts programs. Fresh Meat’s award-winning programs include the popular annual Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance (June), Sean Dorsey Dance’s home season concerts and touring performances, national community residencies, internships and mentoring, and arts programs for emerging transgender artists and arts organizations. Click here to read Dorsey’s complete bio.

Kim Fountain, PhD, is the chief operating officer at Center on Halsted, the Midwest’s largest and most comprehensive LGBTQ center. Fountain has been working in the LGBTQ movement for twenty-five years and has done everything from policy work and community organizing to providing legislative testimonies and written legal declarations to protect the LGBTQ community. They are a cultural anthropologist of systems-based violence and have published on the topic in books and academic journals. Fountain also serves on the executive committee of the Board of Directors for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.

Facilitator Colorado native Zachary Whittenburg spent ten years as a professional dancer with companies including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, BJM Danse Montréal, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and North Carolina Dance Theatre, now Charlotte Ballet. His subsequent freelance career in Chicago included performance, teaching, and choreographic work with, among others, Lucky Plush Productions, Molly Shanahan / Mad Shak, DanceWorks Chicago, Luna Negra Dance Theater, Mordine & Co. Dance Theater, River North Dance Chicago, and Thodos Dance Chicago. As Associate Director of Marketing and Communication at Hubbard Street, he represented the company on the Chicago Dancemakers Forum consortium; as Communications and Engagement Director at Arts Alliance Illinois, he helped promote the value of the arts and give voice to a creative state. Whittenburg contributes regularly to Dance Magazine, is a panelist and guest speaker, and tweets @trailerpilot about contemporary culture, politics, and the performing arts. He is founding board secretary emeritus for the Chicago Dance History Project, serves on the artistic advisory council for High Concept Labs, and is currently director of communications at the Chicago Architecture Center.